Gromnir

you is kidding right? eldar announces that he is gonna do some burton and taylor "taming of the shrew" anniversary motif and you want folks to stay serious? am sorry, but if eldar paints a bull

quality:posts = ____ how can somebody say so much and yet say so very little? ... then again, when Gromnir stops and considers some Justice c. thomas opinions we has read... maybe vis should get into law. seems like every third guy we meet nowadays is a lawyer. heck, our dentist got a law degree from some local night school law program. J. vis? HA! Good Fun!

if you listen to the troika folks (or the codex folks,) the REAL story is that the Suits at activision got a look at bloodlines and were utterly taken aback by it's fantabulousness... the activision folks were so daunted by such a complex and well-crafted crpg that they were moved to destroy it. after all, such perfection could not be allowed to exist in the universe... and in any event, the average gamer would be so overwhelmed by playing a complete and finished bloodlines that only two results were possible: 1) the tiny brains of us average lowly fans would overload after playing some few hours of the game, and we would experience grand mal seizures by the hundreds of thousands. 2) the dozen or so educated and enlightened fans who managed to "get" bloodlines (all the regular codex posters,) would find that their lives were now complete... or at least their gaming lives would be complete, and they would never have a need or desire to play another computer game ever again. in the case of possibility (1) activision were looking at a billion dollar lawsuit... and with (2) activision would be losing a source of important future revenue (the dozen or so regular codex posters.) as such, the Suits at activision decided that they would have to kill bloodlines before it reached the gaming public, so they used every means at their infernal disposal to delay and handicap bloodlines w/o overtly violating their contract with troika. and if the Suits did have to abandon subtlety to wreck bloodlines, then so be it,

little megan, the girl down the street with the lemonade stand, has more business acumen than did the entire troika brain trust. ego is what killed troika. timmy and co. shoulda

checked enworld archive. lord only knows how you find anything with that thing. they do not appear to archive articles so much as threads from their forums... and it is a dmaned disorganized format for searching. bah. tell us who is new at wotc would still tell us little. HA! Good Fun!

press releases not tell us nothing. if we wanna get spun we will go to a carnival and ride the tilt-a-whirl... or whatever they call it nowadays. HA! Good Fun!

is not like times gone by for Gromnir. we got 0 sources at obsidian or bio or wotc. perhaps ferret is just parroting the company line as spoken by fergie, and perhaps ferret genuinely thinks that wotc is a swell bunch of guys to work with/for... but Gromnir is in the dark on this. HA! Good Fun!

save yourself an afternoon, and throw speaker away now. honest. only the most hardcore osc fans like(d) speaker. HA! Good Fun!

the following is lifted from some interview linked at the front page of the obsidian site Strauss: What kind of input has Wizards of the Coast had in the story, mainly on the protagonist and the hero? Ferret: The story and the protagonist

check out the old twilight zone episode, "an occurence at owl creek bridge," or read the short story of the same name. both were better than jaccob's ladder... an not simply 'cause they were the source material. HA! Good Fun!

"Again, it depends how you roleplay. " no it doesn't... not if we is talking 'bout quality of writing.

"As for the art, Oblivion is a beautiful game. I don't see how it could be considered ugly, by any stretch of the imagination." you not gotta stretch 'magination very far at all... simply look at the flat, vacant faces bethesda has given their characters. bethesda shoot for photorealism, and came up short... landed at creepy instead. am not a fan of blizzard. we don't play wow and got no urge to try. however, we thinks that the folks over at blizzard made the right choice in opting for a disneyesque primary color kinda world as 'posed to trying for photorealism. sure, we would prefer something more dark and more grim than the rainbow hued landscape and peoples of wow, but blizzard seemed to recognize that trying to inch closer to realism were a wasted effort. blizzard instead took art inspiration from cartoons & comicbooks. maybe someday personal computers will be goodly enough to run games that got cgi to rival peter jackson's gollum or Kong, but we think that anything short of that will be tending to look bland or... creepy. HA! Good Fun!

for some, fo ain't a game as much as it is a religious icon. did the holy grail ever exist? ultimately does it matter if it did or did not? HA! Good Fun!

for a long time Gromnir had a 78 cherokee jeep. we loved that car. went everywhere in that car. did lots of stuff in that car. ended up flushing a great deal of money down the drain as we attempted to keep that car in working condition. replace rear differential. replace transmission. replace radiator. replace tires and replace battery and get 12 miles to the gallon if we were lucky. during the last two years we owned our 78 cherokee, we spent far more money maintaining that car than we ever could have gotten for it if we had sold it... and the money we wasted on that car trying to keep it rolling were money we coulda' used to buy a new car. computers get obsolete much faster than does cars, but principle is same. at some point the best thing to do is to take the thing out behind the barn and put her out of her misery. HA! Good Fun!

There are a lot of people who believe that writing an ultra-tight story with minimal amounts of mostly insigificant player choice = role-playing. I know that Oblivion seems to be going very far away from that concept and that annoys a lot of people, but it seems great to me. Bethesda tries to do a lot of experimental stuff in their games. Sometimes it fails (spectacularly), but I like the fact that they are doing it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> don't hurt yourself beating on that strawman. good writing does not necessarily require that a protagonist be coddled as he is forced down the critical path towards a fulfilling and coherent story. tangential and optional side quests were numerous in morrowind, and each of those tangential side quests offered an opportunity to be seeing how committed the bethesda folks were to exploring development of character and story w/o wrestling the pc into the necessarily confined choices available when advancing the critical path. instead, the bethesda folks introduced a legion of forgettable characters who were offering largely mundane and uninspired quests. in other words, morrowind were dull... 'course, as we know that josh is far too smarty to suggest that player freedom needs necessarily lead to lame characters and boring story, we will ease up on him as soon as he eases up on the scarecrow he is knocking the stuffing out of. personally, we is willing to give bethesda a second shot. morrowind reminded us a great deal of bg1... w/o some of bg's few redeeming qualities... and look how much bio improved the bg model with bg2. however, we dislikes the pov that oblivion has chosen, and the art looks hideous... so they better have overhauled morrowind's gameplay and writing in a big way if Gromnir is gonna be won over HA! Good Fun!

... how many movies is capable of making grown men weep? oh sure, women tear up watching notebook and titanic and crap like that, but how many movies can put that kinda ache in a man's chest? the reason why filmmakers keep making king kong is 'cause it managed to reach those producers or directors on an emotional level as few other films has. unfortunately, the original kong were done in 1933, and it is dated. show 1933 kong in theatres and nobody would come to see it save for a few hardcore film buffs. directors and producers want to share kong... and they wanna somehow become attached to the kong legacy. update so that kids and young adults will pay to see? make your name synonymous with kong? "everyone cries when the monkey dies." real men walk out of "titanic" and they secretly curse their girlfriends for having forced them to sit through that schmaltzy romantic tragedy. watch men leave theatre after seeing kong. more than a few has watery eyes. sexist? bah. maybe jackson's attempt will fail

American? Just asking... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> know what? we did some teaching in europe... got to see how smarty were the english and irish and spanish university students were. ... let's just say that the belief that american is all fat and stoopid compared to their european counterparts is more myth than reality. our euro friends expected Gromnir to be dumb and uncultured. when the reality did not mesh with their preconceptions, they simply discounted us as aberrational... Gromnir were one of those inconsequential plot points that were not fitting within the bounds of their imaginary bell-curve. change one's opinion of americans after actually interacting with one for a few weeks or months? nope. HA! Good Fun!

like most threads on this board, it is the same dozen people arguing back and forth for 13 pages. tragic. HA! Good Fun!

anybody who actually suggests replicating bg2 size, given the realities of game development today, deserves whatever derision and scorn josh decided to eventually level at them. thankfully you clowns is an easily ignorable minority. HA! Good Fun!

Glass Soup HA! Good Fun!

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod...rch=ST3200826AS HA! Good Fun!

maybe, but the suggestion is also pretty damn meaningless too. A) people want a compelling core storyline. B) people want lots of choices and they want those choices to matter. this would be okie dokie if the (A) people and the (B) people were not the same, but they are... and they not seem to see no tensions 'tween what they is asking for. HA! Good Fun!

regardless, if there were a board geek HoF, ss probably would deserve a nomination. is rare that one of us clowns actually goes out and backs up the bs with the effort and sacrifice required to actually become part of the game industry. you deserve much credit... or a swift kick in the head. tough call. HA! Good Fun!

good luck. am aware that you ain't coming in as cfo or anything, but try to convince the bethesda guys that compelling characters is at core of good crpg story... and character development starts with well-written dialogue. so far we ain't seen evidence that anybody at bethesda knows how to write. push 'em in the right direction and you will have our thanks. ... screw it. you got our thanks regardless. HA! Good Fun!

"Yup BG had the best level progression, levelling up was a HUGE deal especially since there were only 7 (iirc) levels in the game." you and hades and Gromnir like slower level progression. too bad, 'cause the handfil of us not mean squat to developers. anybody who read the bg boards post release and the bg2 development boards will tell you that one of the big complaints 'bout bg1 were the slow leveling. so gve it to 'em. you can give the folks who play crpgs primarily to level exactly what they want w/o screwing up the game for Gromnir and others. sure, is more difficult for a developer to come up with balance and options for 20+ levels as 'posed to 7, but that is what they get paid for, right? make sure that the rule system has depth and we doubt that anybody complains 'bout spending 1 minute every hour or two to level-up. and bg1 were a crappy game for levels 'cause we could make almost 0 meaningful choices as we level. HA! Good Fun!